Culture in Action: Nicaragua's Revolutionary Identities Reconsidered

Rather than assume revolutionary subjectivity during insurrectionary conditions as an ideological historical given, I begin my inquiry into revolutionary action by considering the "contextual point" from the actual participants. "Culture in Action" challenges the notion that revolutionary actors are ipso facto ideologically defined during pre-overthrow conditions. Building on the social movement, revolution, and other pertinent literature as well as using interview data, secondary sources, and historical analysis, I demonstrate that the majority of Sandinista sympathizers were able to transform their social-political reality, not through Marxist-like ideology, but through the radical use of pre-existing idiomatic currencies, with Christian idioms and folkloric Sandinismo as the central vocabularies that helped embodied revolutionary subjecthoods. The piece seeks to shed light on the historico-cultural conditions within which revolutionary actors are constituted, and as such sets out to demonstrate the disruptive potential of culture. An attempt is also made to explore the relationship between idiom and ideology.     

Turmoil in the Taiwan Strait: Wellington Koo and ROC Foreign Policy 1953–1956

Turmoil in the Taiwan Strait addresses Ambassador Wellington Koo's role in Chinese foreign policy from 1953 to 1956 and his relevance in the larger Cold War context. In particular, it focuses on Koo's involvement in the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty and the 1955 Dachen Islands Crisis. This paper argues that, although Koo accomplished a fair amount during this time, he would have encountered fewer professional obstacles had he not represented Chiang Kai-Shek, who had become a controversial figure by the mid-1950s. At the same time, one can conclude that Koo creatively used media and meetings with statesmen abroad to shore up support for the Republic of China during this turbulent decade. This article attempts to provide another perspective on Koo, who has traditionally been understudied in the West. Furthermore, this work seeks to add a meaningful contribution to the historiography on cross-strait relations—particularly in the contemporary era.     

From Konfrontasi to Disintegrasi : ASEAN and the Rise of Islamism in Southeast Asia

This article evaluates the development of militant Islamic threats in Southeast Asia from the early 1990s onwards and its security implications for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The analysis contends that the extent of extremist Islamic infiltration of the region was obscured by governmental rhetoric, along with much Western opinion, which argued erroneously that ASEAN was following a unique developmental path based on shared regional values that had resulted in economic growth and political stability. However, by ignoring underlying religiously motivated tensions within and among its membership, and by refusing to countenance mature debate about them within their societies, ASEAN has succeeded only in incubating its potential nemesis.     

Assessing oral skills—time for reflection,time for risk

Abstract

THIS PAPER aims to establish a framework from which we can explain our dissatisfaction with defining what we teach and what and how we assess within legal education. To what extent can we, the professions or the public, have confidence that our assessment processes predict effective professional competence?

We will try to establish this framework by placing the discussion in the context of a workshop of assessment of oral skills run at the 2001 Bar Vocational Course conference. The workshop raised issues which we believe encapsulate the difficulties of measuring performance in such a way that it reliably predicts professional effectiveness. From this we will attempt to highlight the shortcomings of the current teaching, learning and assessment strategies more generally.

We go on to consider the role of student reflection in support of summative assessment: is it a reliable way of helping to plug the competence‐performance gap we have identified? What is its role in summative assessment? What demands does it make on tutor and learner? Since we cannot guarantee to find the best solutions first time, we make a plea for taking the risk of failure as well as success, and trying out ideas.     

A Woman's Life Before Serving Life: Examining the Negative Pre-Incarceration Life Events of Female Life-Sentenced Inmates

Despite the increase in the number of females incarcerated, there is a paucity of research concerning female life-sentenced inmates in the United States. Using a nationally representative data set containing the largest known sample of this population, the present research examines the pre-incarceration traumatic experiences of female life-sentenced inmates. The results indicate that these women are more likely to experience traumatic events, in particular abuse, than either male life-sentenced inmates or female inmates in general. Logistic regression analyses reveal a significant association between abuse and a life sentence in both gender-specific models.     

Developing a Spatial-Temporal Method for the Geographic Investigation of Shoeprint Evidence

Abstract:  This article examines the potential of a spatial-temporal method for analysis of forensic shoeprint data. The large volume of shoeprint evidence recovered at crime scenes results in varied success in matching a print to a known shoe type and subsequently linking sets of matched prints to suspected offenders. Unlike DNA and fingerprint data, a major challenge is to reduce the uncertainty in linking sets of matched shoeprints to a suspected serial offender. Shoeprint data for 2004 were imported from the Greater London Metropolitan Area Bigfoot database into a geographic information system, and a spatial-temporal algorithm developed for this project. The results show that by using distance and time constraints interactively, the number of candidate shoeprints that can implicate one or few suspects can be substantially reduced. It concludes that the use of space-time and other ancillary information within a geographic information system can be quite helpful for forensic investigation.     

An Economic Justification for Open Access to Essential Medicine Patents in Developing Countries

This paper offers an economic rationale for compulsory licensing of needed medicines in developing countries. The patent system is based on a trade-off between the "deadweight losses" caused by market power and the incentive to innovate created by increased profits from monopoly pricing during the period of the patent. However, markets for essential medicines under patent in developing countries with high income inequality are characterized by highly convex demand curves, producing large deadweight losses relative to potential profits when monopoly firms exercise profit-maximizing pricing strategies. As a result, these markets are systematically ill-suited to exclusive marketing rights, a problem which can be corrected through compulsory licensing. Open licenses that permit any qualified firm to supply the market on the same terms, such as may be available under licenses of right or essential facility legal standards, can be used to mitigate the negative effects of government-granted patents, thereby increasing overall social welfare.